


crooked halo

by Theriotype



Series: species dysphoria [1]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Angels, Dragons, Fallen Angels, Gen, Light Angst, Otherkin, Species Dysphoria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 14:56:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20244700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theriotype/pseuds/Theriotype
Summary: Angels walk among us, with crooked halos and damaged wings. They walk alongside the dragons, with their heads held high and smoke still billowing from their nostrils. They walk together, for they know they are like one another, for they share the same pain, the same deep anguish of the spirit.They walk together, for they know they are both heading home.---Or, David is angelkin and wants to go home.





	crooked halo

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short drabble I wrote on my phone in about an hour. 
> 
> Don't mind me, just venting my kin feels and species dysphoria through the characters of a Roosterteeth cartoon.

He wanted to go home. He didn't really know where home was, but he knew he wanted to go there. He had to.

Anyone who knew David would say he was a respectable, kind young man with a heart of gold and an inherently gentle nature that could tame a dragon's flame. That he was a nomad, a hiker, someone who always had their body in a tent in the middle of a forest, and their mind a thousand miles away in the mountains of the Himalayas. That he, in all of his pure hearted passion, was a man who belonged in the woods, in a small secluded space, away from the hustle and the buzz of modern day life.

Maybe that was why he chose a job at a summer camp, away from society, in a lonely little woodland forest in the middle of nowhere. It certainly wasn't for the money, considering his boss only paid him and his coworker Gwen a measly $40 a week, and it certainly wasn't because he had gone to the exact same camp as a young boy, eyes bright and hands calloused from foraging for bits and pieces in the woods. 

Well, maybe the latter had been a factor, but it certainly hadn't been the main reason. No, the most important parts of David's job were the acres and acres of natural forest that flourished in the land around them, and the campers themselves. The children, all curious eyes and eager smiles, hands covered in leaves and twigs and their shoes covered in mud. 

Of course, Camp Campbell was nothing compared to Heaven, with its venomous wildlife and unpredictable weather, all its poison ivy and the occasional rabid platypus, but it would have to do.

After all, all the angels were already there, and what else does Heaven really need?

Sometimes, at night, David could feel them. It would start off subtle at first, a slight ache in his back, a heaviness that caused him to slump forward, all of which had been put off by the others as just late-night woes. Then, it escalated into a deep spiritual anguish, an ache of the soul, a hanging weight where David  _ knew _ something should be but he just couldn't  _ see it _ . He could feel the softness of feathers, the heavy ache of weary bones within a pair of flowing wings that he  _ could not see _ . 

Sometimes, at midnight, David could even feel the crooked halo atop his head. 

It wasn't quite as bad during the day, but whenever he would feel that certain change (a  _ shift _ , as he had learned it was called during one of the few times he had ever managed to use the internet), they would come back, in all their ragged, fallen glory, and with them would come the same feelings of homesickness that came to him every night he lay, sleepless, in his counselor's cabin. The only difference was that, during the day, it was worse. Far, far worse.

After all, what is the sky without stars, his only companion from above?

So, in those shifts, without the stars and without the night, David would sleep. Gwen assured the campers he just needed extra time to rest due to his habits of staying up until the early hours of morning, but in reality, it was so that, even for just a second, he could remember what it was like to be home. To be glorious, heavenly, divine, before he damned himself by caring too much for those the other angels dubbed as inferior, as mortals. He fell for a man, a mortal, human man, all blonde hair and snow white clothes, and in return, he fell from grace. From Heaven, all the way down to the humans he cared so much for. 

Of course, if there was one good thing that came from his fall, it was that. He was with the humans he cared for, the children he cared for. He knew he couldn't give them all the love that was in his heart, for it would simply overflow a mortal and leave them bewildered, but he could at least give them the love and care they needed in this broken world. 

After all, almost everyone in Camp Campbell was broken, at least to an extent. Two, however, stood out.

That was David himself, all broken halos and damaged wings, and Max. The ten year old boy with a grim gaze and a mouth that spat curses like a sailor, doomed to a watery death in the sea. 

Unlike David, Max was young, almost as young as David himself had been the first time he set foot in the very woods that he now called home. In similar fashion to David, however, Max was also broken. Hurt. Fallen. 

Unlike David, though, Max's fall had left him bitter, a nihilist with a deep fury in his eyes that could turn Medusa to stone. David's fall, meanwhile, had left him shattered but with a deep, spiritual need to mend others and put them back together again, to fix the wounds he himself would never heal from.

David was an angel, and Max? 

Well, Max was a dragon.

A dragon. That was the only thing David could think of to accurately define everything that made Max… well, Max. Max burnt the world around him to the ground, while David planted roses in the ashes that had once been his kingdom.

Despite all this, Max was not beyond hope. David could tell. He had an inherent talent for reading people, for knowing- _ feeling _ their emotions. Gwen called him an empath. Cameron called him an oversensitive coward, who cared far too much about how others felt and about how he affected the world around him.

On certain days, usually when Max was with his closest and, to be quite honest,  _ only _ friends, David could tell something that the others could not, what with how good Max had gotten at hiding his emotions behind a mask. No, the others had no clue that, behind the frown?

Max was almost always at his happiest when he was with them.

Every night, David said a quiet prayer to whatever, whoever was listening, thanking them for giving Max another chance.

A chance that David, fallen angel or not, was going to use to the fullest to save the boy no one else understood.

The boy that, to an angel, was everything he knew he had to protect.

David had been in the forest, on the same old stump he always frequented, with the same old frown permanently etched on his features as his wings, invisible as they were, seemed to brush against the soil with every breath he took.

There was a rustle in the bushes behind him, which David paid no mind to. It was midnight, there was bound to be animals out foraging. Probably just a hedgehog or a badger, maybe a fox. 

There was another rustle, the sound of shoes hitting the earth as something-some _ one _ came up behind him, and sat down on the stump beside him. 

David glanced to look.

It was Max, brow furrowed and his gaze a thousand miles away, twigs and leaves poking from his hair and adorning his hoodie.

Both sat in silence for a few minutes, the only audible sound being the hooting of owls and the rustling of nocturnal creatures, searching among the undergrowth for berries, insects and anything else they could use to stave off the hunger that seemed to permeate the air around the small, secluded spot.

Max turned to David, slowly, as if thinking his next words over carefully.

"You're an angel, aren't you?" 

Max's words shocked David out of his stupor, the camp counselor only able to stare at Max in surprise. Several moments passed without a word between them.

Max was the first to speak up. "Uh, hey? Earth to David?" 

David shook his head, doing his best to chase off the astonishment that had suddenly gripped his form. "How… how did you know that?" He was too shocked to even deny the words, too surprised and quite frankly unnerved by the statement to even consider protesting against it.

Even then, denying would most likely be fruitless in the first place, considering the stubborn, knowing look in Max's eyes.

"Pretty simple, David. It's hard to miss a guy going around camp with a crooked halo and a great big pair of wings flopping everywhere."

David froze. "You… you can see those?"

Max shrugged. "I can see a lot of things. Like, right now, I can see how absolutely batshit you're going trying to figure out how  _ I _ managed to figure out you're some kind of fallen angel."

David simply sat on the stump, dumbfounded. Wind whistled around them as he forced his next words out.

"You're… like me, aren't you, Max?"

Max paused for a moment, before shrugging. "Sorta, I guess. I don't really have a halo, but sometimes I feel these leathery wings on my back, and these gnarly claws. Occasionally I even feel a tail, but that's pretty rare in comparison. How about you?"

David sits, too stunned by the statement to speak for a moment, but a quiet  _ ahem _ from Max knocks him out of his silence and he pushes out a shaky response.

"Well, I usually only feel the halo and the wings." His response is short, to the point, but Max seems satisfied with it. They sit in silence for another few minutes. 

"David?" Max whispers, almost too quiet to hear.

"Yes, Max?"

"Do you ever want to go home? Like, home home?"

David pauses.

"Yes, Max. I do."

The two remained silent for the rest of the night.

Far, far away, a wolf howled, and the moon shone down brighter than ever before.

**Author's Note:**

> If you couldn't tell, Max is meant to be dragonkin.


End file.
